“Darling,” she said, “what a relief! You’ve no idea what a bore our dentist is.”
“You didn’t look so bored to me.”
She rolled her head and looked up at his face. “Darling, are you going to be difficult again?”
“I’m sick of Dr. Norton Foresman, that’s all.”
“So am I. Believe me, I was never so sick of anyone in my life before. It’s only because he’s essential. You know that. We’ve got to have him.”
“It’s taking a long time. I never thought it would take so long.”
“We have to be sure. It would be fatal to make a mistake.”
“How much longer?”
“Not long. Not much longer now.”
“Sure. Not much longer. Well, I don’t mind waiting. It’ll be easy. I’ll just drink bourbon and think about the pair of you.”
“You said you wouldn’t brood, darling. You promised you wouldn’t talk about it.”
“Tell me the truth, Etta. Aren’t you rather enjoying yourself?”
“Stop it, Peter.”
“A big, handsome guy like him ought to be very amusing.”
“Damn it, Peter, cut it out! You go on brooding like this, you’ll end up wrecking everything. You’re going pretty sour, you know. Next thing, you’ll be getting violent.”
“Pardon me for going sour. I know it’s unreasonable of me.”
“All right, Peter, all right. Just quit thinking about it. Just think about how it will be when it’s all over. Think about you and me and all the places we’ll go and all the things we’ll do and all the time we’ll have to spend together.”
“And all the money.”
“Yes. And all the money. It wouldn’t be fun without money, Peter. Not for me and not for you. We don’t have to kid ourselves about that.”
His right hand dropped from the wheel to her knee, and he felt her instant response, heard the soft whisper of breath sucked suddenly into her throat. It was always like that. It never failed. His ability to make her respond at once and with intensity was the last remnant of whatever dominance he may once have felt. It sustained him in his sour waiting, in the concession that no man can make and not be sick.
Passing into the suburban area of the city, they began the gradual ascent to the bluff above the river. Crossing the crest of the rise, they dropped down the brief descent to the lip of the bluff and the frail fence along it. The good place for an accident.
Abruptly, he stopped the car beside the fence and looked out and down to the shrunken gray stream in the valley, lean from the long dry months.
“I think I’ll get away for a while,” he said.
Her eyes were briefly startled. “Away? Where?”
“Up to the lodge, I think. Maybe I’ll do some hunting.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“Until you’re ready. Until Dr. Norton Foresman has been persuaded.”
“I see.” She picked a cigarette from her purse and lit it with the dash lighter. The smoke piled up on the windshield and spread out in a small, billowing cloud. “I think that might be a good idea. You’re in a dangerous mood, darling. You need to get some of the tension out of you.”
“When you want me, write General Delivery at King’s Center. It’s a little junction development about six miles from the lodge. I’ll drive down every day or so to check.” Twisting suddenly in the seat, he seized her by the hair and jerked her head back. “Say it won’t be long, Etta. Say it again.”
She reacted to his violence with a pleasure that was almost masochistic.
Her mouth shaped against his the pattern of her assurance.
“Soon, darling. Just as soon as I can.”
CHAPTER 5.
The lodge was a rustic, single-story structure of unpeeled logs. It was built into the side of a hill and had acquired with time an appearance of being almost part of the hill. Below the lodge, in the hollow at the foot of the hill, was a clear stream, spring-fed, in which game fish could be taken in season. The surrounding hills were the remnants of an ancient orogeny, their thin top-soil broken by countless outcroppings of rock and nourishing a sparse growth of brush and scrub timber. In the hills were quail and plenty of small game.
Peter hunted sometimes during the day, tramping the hills with a 12-gauge shotgun, and there was something in the country that renewed assurance, an atmosphere of incredible age that reduced passion and violence and all human aberrations whatever to the status of petty absurdity. But the nights were bad. The nights were times of distorted imagery, and he brooded with a growing hatred over the morbid details of Dr. Norton Foresman’s planned corruption.
Every second afternoon he drove down to King’s Center and inquired for mail in the tiny post office. There was no letter the first week, nor the second, but the fourth day of the third week the letter was there. With the current phase of the waiting finished, all the malignancy seemed to drain from him like a poisonous fluid released by incision, leaving him strangely quiet, almost apathetic, and he drove all the way back to the lodge with the letter unopened in his pocket.
He read it in the living room of the lodge in front of the natural stone fireplace:
Darling,
Persuasion complete. Now I must die as quickly as possible. Do you remember the highway restaurant at the junction of 14 and 56 near the Kaw City? Meet me there at nine o’clock the morning of the 15th. I’ll go there from here on the bus. You can drive me on into the city.
It was unsigned. He dropped the envelope and the single sheet of crisp paper on the fire and watched them burn. Her written words were as real as her voice,
